I’ve been using OpenOffice for close to two years now, every since I went fulltime on Linux. I have generally been pleased although at times it has been a love/hate relationship.

At the moment I prefer the oo equivalents over MS equivalents in almost all regards, allthough MS Office for Mac looks delicious.

Recently we decided at work to try Sun’s StarOffice which we now have standardized with on all our desktops (both windows and linux). Why? when OO is free?

Well, StarOffice doesnt cost a whole hell of a lot ~$50 per license and it is basically the same, just more polished. I cant quite put my finger on it, but it seems more responsive and slicker than OO. The functionality is basically the same, allthough with StarOffice you receive a large collection of templates, clipart etc. I have generally had fewer problems with it than with OO.

General comments about OO/StarOffice. These are common about the two of them:

StarOffice calc is very advanced, I find the only main thing to let it down is the graphing module, which isnt all that good. The auditing tools are good, you can easily setup very complex spread sheets.

Write is excellent and provides I think more features than word does. In particular its XML support is incredible, with the support of customised XSL you can create your own. (This is true of all the modules) The PDF export is usefull as well.

Draw is one of my favorite applications that is also the least remembered in the suite. Think of it as a cross between a traditional vector drawing program (like Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator) and diagraming tool like Visio. I love the way that I can group items together, then “enter” and “exit” them. This makes it so easy to create complex documents. Ofcourse all your groups automatically work in a Visio style diagram. My main problem is that it exports SVG very badly and that you cant import SVG. Hint use .svm files if your are saving your diagrams for use in other oo modules. The option to create reusable stylesheets for your graphics is also really cool and usefull.

You can create your own “Gallery” and add your own files to it. This is what I do to create Visio style template palettes.

Impress is very good, I am not a PowerPoint expert, but I think it is at least as good. The exported powerpoints work well as well. As do the exported PDF’s and flash files.

Overall OO/SF is very well integrated. The “Stylist” for creating stylesheets and the “Navigator” for navigating complex documents is available in all apps.

Keep up the good work OpenOffice.org and Sun. The main focus on development as I can see now is on integrating tighter with desktop environments. The windows integration is very good, on par with MS I think. The unix integration is poor at the moment, but Ximian and KDE are both working on integration projects. As are a couple of groups for Mac.